week three.

First Grade:
My five minute demo was showing them resist with a white crayon on white paper and doing a wash with tempera paint. I showed them the "white" piece of paper (that I had already drawn a design on), and then washed over it. One student said that I was magic. I told them I would show them how to use magic, too.
I have one student in class who is very much "I can't draw." Which bums me out because he's only in first grade. So I worked with him a lot. Unfortunately, while I was working with him, other students discovered mixing the paints.... which would be fine, except that it made clean up that much more difficult. They had done such a good job last week, I may have let my guard down a little. But there was way too much chatting and fooling around. No painting next week for firsts.


Fifth Grade:
We talked about painting from the back to the front and "wet on dry" painting. Then they were off. I don't know what it was- must have been something in the air today, but both classes wanted to splatter their paint off the end of their brushes. Which wouldn't be a huge issue for me, except this group really needs to work on the whole "teamwork" thing... man. Lots of "he did it, not me's" and whiney voices. Not okay. It's a good thing they did a good job cleaning up. Next week we will talk about Pollock. For sure.

weeks one and two.

So... I didn't post last week. "So far- off to a bad start." I will do better, especially because I'm getting really excited.

Week One:
First Graders- Drawing Station. I basically opened the station and told them about their choices. I didn't want to talk a lot more to do a five minute mini lesson (I think I'm going to start calling that FMML) because I didn't want to take up their art time. They had a hard time understanding the chart to record what they were doing. I got a lot of "Can I try again?"s and "Can I do another drawing?"s. To which I emphatically responded "YES!" with a big smile and nod.

Fifth Graders- Drawing Station: Talked a little more with the 5ths about what we are doing in Art and why. They were psyched that they were the "special" class that gets to do something different right now. This is a chatty bunch with no concept of "inside voices." There was a lot of drawing going on.

Both groups had a hard time with clean up- too much fooling around.

Week Two
This was yesterday, so I will go into more detail...

First Graders- Opened Painting Station.
They did very well. There was one point in class where it was eerily quiet, and all students were contentedly working away. When their teacher came to pick them up, I learned that they were having a particularly difficult day... One student in class decided that he was going to draw and paint on the same paper. I told him this was called "mixed media."

Fifth Graders- Opened Painting Station.
Pretty smooth. The kids did a good job deciding taking care of their materials. I have yet to see anyone go into any particular depth in any project, but I think this is probably the hardest thing about this style of art- getting them to commit... I had one student who didn't want to draw or paint, so I talked with him and asked him about what his favorite thing in art was last year. We talked about coil building and he made plans to build a set of coil vessels.



Now I've got to order some clay....

it starts.

I recently began a new teaching job in MSAD 57 in southern Maine. This year, I have made the switch from teaching high school age students to teaching grades K-6. I spend three mornings per week teaching 5th and 6th grade at Waterboro Elementary and the rest of my week teaching K-6 at Lyman Elementary.

Recently, one of my administrators told me about a different style of teaching Art known as "TAB Choice," or Teaching for Artistic Behavior. After researching on the internet for a good number of hours, I am very excited about the possibilities of this teaching and learning style for my classroom. In a TAB Choice Art class, the students are the artists. The teacher does not come up with specific assignments for the students to complete, instead, they are in control of the subject matter and choice of materials and medium of their work, just as professional artists are. The teacher provides instruction for a brief 5-10 minute period at the beginning of class to introduce a new material center, or to demonstrate a different technique using materials the students are already familiar with. After the instruction, the students may choose to use the new materials or technique and practice that that day, or work on something else. Students are responsible for the care and cleanliness of their studio and know that the consequences of not caring for the materials are the loss of the privilege of using them the following week.

I am going to begin using TAB Choice with a 1st grade and a 5th grade class beginning this coming week. This will give me the chance to figure out what works well for me and my students and iron out all the kinks. The experimental classes will last through the first trimester, at which point, I will evaluate the pros and cons of the method and make a decision of whether it would be educationally valuable to use this method with all of my classes.